Making everyone happy is impossible. Pissing them off is a piece of cake. I like cake.

Sunday, June 26, 2016

It's Brexit—so what now?

It is very difficult to write about this subject objectively. I have been waiting, and agitating, for a referendum on the EU for more than twenty years now—and I never dared to believe, even once it was achieved, that the UK would actually vote to leave the EU.

But we have. So, please indulge this humble Devil whilst he expresses his considered and thought out opinion on the matter.

Personally, your humble Devil has never been much good at the detail of things—I prefer to engage in strategy. This is what I do in business, and in the little that I have been involved in politics. So, what follows are a few random comments from that perspective.

I would have said that Cameron had to go, but he has already fallen on his sword. Unfortunately, because his blade is as soft and shit at its job as he is, it has bent and is only very gently impaling its master over the course of months. Cameron has decided that he will only utter the fatal words when he is too dead to have to bear the shame of capitulation: to that end, he is willing to screw the British people in some desperate attempt to delay the inevitable. He is a cunt—teasing with his lips whilst attempting to prevent the painful penetration of his ego as long as possible—and should be pushed down to full penetration right to the hilt as soon as possible.

Osborne seems to have disappeared: his promise to wreak revenge on the British people should they have the temerity to vote the wrong way has put him in something of a quandary—or "right in the shit", as we might say. Ludicrously, he is apparently ringing around to gather soundings as to his viability for Tory leadership. Due to the shortness of these conversations, I don't see his phone bill being particularly high this month.

Michael Gove has always been a canny—and, dare I say it, honourable—politician. As such, he has ruled himself out of running for the leadership. I like to think that it is because he is well aware that, having told some outrageous lies, he cannot in all conscience lead the party to a victory. I sympathise: like Gove, I have accepted that, in this most important of votes, the end does justify the means. But just because we have won, that doesn't mean that we are not tainted.

Boris. Well, what can one say...? Boris is entertaining, and seems to be able to laugh off any embarrassment. I wouldn't write him off (although I wouldn't endorse him either).

A lot of people have opined that Farage's mission is now over, and he should fuck off into the middle distance—as should UKIP. Surely, they say, UKIP only existed to drive a referendum on the EU—having won it, that party has no reason to exist.

That is not true: the reason for that is the group of libertarian bloggers—including myself and Tim Worstall (and many others)—who, back in the mid-2000s—persuaded Nigel that UKIP needed to have a truly national manifesto. This manifesto should be a blueprint for what Britain should look like if freed from the EU (and we thought that this event would take decades—not a decade). We then helped to build a libertarian manifesto, and to persuade people that it was a relevant addition to the national conversation. We failed.

UKIP adopted the anti-immigration manifesto that so many of us found... er... problematic. But most of our effort remains at its core and, as a result, UKIP is not now neutered by a successful Leave vote.

Importantly, UKIP has captured huge swathes of the traditionally Labour heartlands—and it won't give up these voters without a fight. And nor will those voters swiftly return to Labour (but more on that later).

There is a huge problem here. The problem is this: vast swathes of Britain are deeply moribund economically, and these people are poor (by a Western way of thinking). Right now, they might blame the EU—but once that excuse has been removed, we are still left with a severely divided country. We need to find a way to fix this.

The great thing about Brexit is that is gives us a strategic decision by, as it were, our shareholders. Now the managers of the company need to be able to work out how to enact that decision in the best interest of the shareholders. And I am far from certain that any of them know how to do it.

Your humble Devil will write more on this—alas, I have to satisfy my own shareholders, and have no more time at this stage. But I shall be back...

There remain no upsides to you smashing up my country. We haven't triggered article 50 and probably won't. You lied to the electorate, and worked with bigots, and you will be betrayed. I hope you choke on your "victory".